In this paper, I explore the interplay of academic performance and social identification in contemporary Spanish schools through a case study of the academic career of an Ecuadorian teenager in Madrid. I focus in particular

on the process by which she comes to identify herself as distinct from her Spanish peers, both within and outside of the classroom. Based on this case example, I argue that Spanish schools have not only become a site at which students come to self-identity as Latinos, but also where they come to accept the subordinate economic, political and social position of Latinos in Spanish society.